BAGHDAD -- Iraqi authorities say they have processed the cases of more than 1,500 detainees under their control in accordance with the recent U.S.-Iraq security pact that took effect on January 1.

High Judicial Council spokesman Abdul-Sattar al-Beriqdar told RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq that the agreement states that detainees being held by the United States with insufficient evidence against them be released and those with arrest warrants be transferred to Iraqi authorities to be prosecuted.

Some 17,000 detainees, most of them Iraqis, are still in the Iraq-based U.S. military camps Bucca and Cooper.